(Review Completed) [SP] Abandoned Armies

[456820]

Everon has Christmas trees at Christmas

really i didnt know that or notice it i did though on Kolgujev but i thought that was an addon
anyway ill probaly edit this post with a carry on from where i left off

EDIT - Okay review
i load up ofp and select your mission and as soon as i click start i get a CTD and i cant play the gme now ? weird worked before

[lilwillie_WI]

A few days of playing. V1.21, zip for lag, benched at 6850..

Last post I left off just ambushing a jeep group south of Houdan. All three taken out very nicely with some satchels. One lone soldier managed to be blown to the water ( from the road that passes by the cliff section south of Houdan, get up, run, lay down and then take a bullet from my 60 gunner.

With that it was getting dark and I decided to do some sneak-and-peak around Chapoi. The rain picked up so I deemed it a good time to try for a stealth kill on Stamenov. All snipers eliminated by 6:30pm or so, into town from the west side. Find a Hind had crashed and killed off a t-80, and a large platoon. Making my job easy. Creeped up the main road and used my HK on anyone in site. Taking alot of time, I cleared the middle of town. Moving up threw the prisoner camp, never raising a eyebrow from the enemy. Then south around the fenced, using the buildings for snipe posistions. Again, taking alot of time as to not raise suspision. Around 8pm I had the area clear enough to sneak inside the fence and take down the HQ. Entered and nailed the lower guard, up the stairs fast to find Stamenov cowering in the corner like a dog. Two to the mid and one in the temple for good measure and he was history. Exited the building slowly, thining someone by now should have seen that the guards around the base where all dead. The sky's had cleared and my sight line improved. Moved east threw town and then along the lower sandbag section when I heard tanks in the distance. I must have triggered something, up and running like hell. Wish I had had some mines to place and watch the carnage. Running out of town I stopped and looked back to see that one: had no persuarers, and two, now had a re-occupied town with about 20 hardened troops and a Abram's, T80, and BMP to deal with. Guess I don't get a A+ for the take down since I didn't recover all those pretty tanks sitting near the depot.  Threw all this, I used up 6 saves. It took a few days of playing, and never a bit of lag or issues.

So, Chapoi needs to be "cleansed" again, my plan of taking the base solo didn't work, on reflection I should have used my team to lock down the east side and prepare a antitank trap for the visitors. Solo work bite's my ass again.

I redeployed my boys (me lady is at HQ on mess duty with her lover and the other lazy bum) to the north and decided I am going to wait out the night. It is now 10:30pm. My battle tactics in the dark are not very good when dealing with a full unit up against armor. Seems even with NG I allow them into stupid spots. I let the game play threw the night, and did some real human work around home.

 Came back and it is 3:35 am, daylight coming soon and I am formulating my attack plan for Chapoi. I want that armor, all of it dang it. The 20 or so troops in town are on a pretty easy patrol route, heading only south at times in intervals. Also, the crews for the armor are out, and patrolling with the troops. The Abrams is parked in the fenced area, near HQ, and the T80 and BMP are in the open, about 70 meters from the crew. If I do this right I will have a nice armor squad since the equipment near the depot section is in pristine shape.

More to come soon. Again, no play problems, running low on saves so "savegame cheat" is still in play, making me pathetic but hey, I am having a blast with this mission.

[Planck]

I just got war started.

I mined both approaches to La Trinite and when I came back later, the south convoy tripped one of my AV mines.

I lay in a bush for absolute ages watching events unfold.
Eventually infantry started fighting....gunfire......LAW's.....RPG's.......grenades.....it was fun to watch.

I occasionally took out any infantry that got close enough, but mostly I watched.

Then armour started turning up.
There was an amazing battle of the tanks, several times I thought my bush was going to get flattened along with me.
The place is now littered with wrecked armour.
It seemed to me that the south got the upper hand and pushed on north.......it went quiet here.

After some time northern troops turned up, I presume the south got defeated further north.
Marvellous stuff, I spent at least 2 hours watching before withdrawing with the northern ammo truck.

Making my escape with the truck I came across a northern squad standing around in a nice neat 'V' formation.
I ran 4 of them down and continued for home, all the while getting shot at by the others.

I got back to my people, who were stashed away south of the lodge near a rock, I re-armed them with better weapons, then went to park the truck.

There was a lone american soldier standing near the lodge, he looked badly hurt, he was all bloody.
How he managed to make it to the lodge that quick I don't know it was a good 1.5 km from where I ran him down.
Maybe he got stuck on my truck and was carried here.  

Any way, I ran him down, but he was still standing and started firing at me, so I ran him down again........third time unlucky for him.

It was really entertaining watching this long battle going on, which I knew I had kicked into motion.


Planck

[Mikero]

@THobson

Heads UP THobson. Have finished your 1.23. It remains, a majestic, magnificent, marvellous, masterpiece.

This isn't an encouragement award, it's a statement of fact that you, of all people, appear to be missing. You pass thru villages and countryside towards ending mission, recalling all the glorious battles, the fights, the desperation. You sit thru the outro, going gah and gasp.

Modesty is one thing, but for you to fall into gloom and despair is ridiculous. Step back and look THob.

>dead leader

change it to 'the other side' does an all out attack on the leaderless mob. This will <ahem> reduce the lag count, eventually. Or, get them to fight amongst themselves, or, leave it alone and stop fussing.

---

I did an Xcess and went alone. Namely, I ticked off all objectives but essentially kept everyone at the lodge. It was long, slow, exhilarating, frustrating and all other things. It can, (clearly) be done, but not half as immersive as involving Irena. Every single one of the uncountable firefights me, against them, was a mission in itself.

I managed to take both leaders out by laboriously picking off each and every loon in entire area, plus each and every loon that came into the vicinity (the latter is one of the magic pieces of this game of yours). Large quantity of cheatsaves and judicious but liberal use of savegames were involved. The amount of gamesaves is 'about right' and I would alter it to ONE to start and be far far more generous at each objective, 3,4,5,10+ eg. This would be a good way to teach the player to play the objectives (admittedly a bit of linear train track here, but, nice learning curve with Pavlov's Dog)

ambient sounds kicked in, bird noises, no peeping civilians.

After killing a leader, I hotfooted it to other enemy camp (both times). I *knew* what you had in store for me if I stuck around. Very concentrated enemy at army defeat times, as you describe, lag quite hard, but not impossible (unlike T3).

The concentrations of enemy troops as you describe it, doesn't quite happen that way, generally, half the nasties are chasing you (tanks especially). After swiping Stamenov (south) I screamed out of there and collected my people at Le Port, I assumed the pows would be massacred otherwise. not an issue that they aren't, it's the perception that they will be that counts, screamed up the north road to that narrowing valley and stopped out of curiosity at the wrecked civil, (another, immersive, high quality piece of detail leaving player with conviction she hasn't seen one third of this map of yours. and, she hasn't)

Spent my entire mission time with my ass on fire, screaming away, terrified.

Godzilla and his Bmp wannabe were in pursuit and came thundering over the top of us. WHAT A MISSION. Changed my underpants after that.

Everything about 1.23 is 'right' It's the true successor of 1.1 with all the missing detail filled in.

As Planck describes it, your happy to WATCH battles.

Stop fussing THob and start basking in a bit of well deserved glory.

[THobson]

lilwillie_WI, Planck, Mikero:
Guys, this is wonderful stuff to read.

lilwille_WI: reading your account reminded me of watching one of my sons play it.  The first time he crawled over the top of the hill north of Chapoi and looked down on the town he said - ‘I could get in there at night, now what should I do until it gets dark?'!!  I loved that.  It is the sort of thing I want the player think.

I wanted to create a world that people felt was real and one where they would enjoy spending time.  You guys have made my day.

Mikero:
Thank you for your comments.  I must admit to being somewhat distressed yesterday when I experienced the lag I had created, but I guess in time I will deal with that.  There are the ‘glass half full' type of people where everything is good and the ‘glass half empty' people that are never satisfied.  I am of the ‘the glass is half empty - and it was too bloody small to start with' persuasion.

But even I am thrilled that you Planck will sit for 2 hours just watching, that you Mikero are having the experience I hoped I would create, that you lilwillie_WI and XCess are doing things I never thought possible.

Glad you heard the birds (no dogs?), pity about the peeping civis - they are there longer and more frequently than before.  I have made some changes to LaT (in v1.23) that I am quite pleased with.  It makes it more dynamic and bit more of a challenge.

Anyway guys after yesterday when I got really irritated with the lag, your posts were exactly the tonic I needed.  Thanks.

[marshmanguy]

Yeah, Thob here deffinately deserves a stiff gin and a pat on the back.  I just love how you're afraid to stick around when plundering.  In La Pessagne, I was alone and loading up the police jeep when I see some lights which aren't mine and the jeep convoy comes parading through, needless to say I made tracks.  Then again, in Dourdan, I was plundering and I look behind me to see some jerk taking down my flag and a whole squad coming over the lip.  Then when I RETRUN to Dourdan to take it back, they'd set up an mg or brought in tanks or something cuz machine gun bullets were thudding left right and center.  Unfortunately I saved a mere second before the machine gun bullets nipped my young life in the bud so it's back to the fjord.  Anyways, bloody good SHOW.  And the lag isn't your fault, your mission has surpassed the game, lets blame it on the game.

[THobson]

marshmanguy:
Thanks - I'll take the gin.

Are there many more guys like you out there playing this silently?  I thought  it was just a half dozen or so of us.

Any geniune comments or suggestions gets you on the list of beta testers and I still have space for more names.  The gin almost gets you there.

[funkster]

Hey there Thob,
Finally got around to playing this mission tonight, and wow, from the start the quality and really hits home. So far, Ive had one go, read a post or two before hand, so I was expecting something realistic, I was careful, played for about an hour and a half, got all the way to (almost Houdan), and then a tank blew me away. Boo, hoo. Im going to go and have another go at it after this. Just one complaint, not with your mission, but with OFP AI I think. It was still fairly dark, and mist allowed visibility of 100m max. But this tank blew away me pretty lil truck from about 500m away. Not fair, the radar would warn that Im there, but I dont think it can aim with it alone....

Anyway, I can see this is shaping up to be one hell of a masterpeice, you must have put so much work into this, what? 400 hours or someth?

Nice one man, nice one. Im off to play more, be back....


funkster

[THobson]

funkster:

Glad you like it so far.  Yes vehicles are not terribly safe if there is armour or helicopters about.

400 hours?  I have not kept track of the time - but that would be 8 hours a day 5 days a week for two weeks.  I suspect that is barely a fraction of the time I have spent on it.  I have had to learn a lot - for example: this is my first mission with custom sounds, this is my first mission using dialogues etc. etc.  In fact just about everywhere I look it it is my first try at something.


ALL:
I too have a phantom woman in my truck.  I don't know when she got in, but she does look very much like one of the women in the second group of civis , she also looks a little like HoudanWoman in the dark so I am not sure.  Whichever she is I have no explanation for her being in the truck.  Her face reminds me of Alexi's mother in the intro.  One test I haven't yet done is to kill her.  If she is one of the resued civis then the result should be a red cross against the appropriate objective and bullet or two from my squad.

I don't know if it is related but when I reorganise my team all those that have previously been in the truck head off back to it.  Giving them a another disembark instruction even though they were not in the truck at the time, seemed to cure that.

[dantheman]

Hi there THobson.  I've finally downloaded your mission as there has been so much fuss about it I wanted to know waht it really is like.  Ok, watched the intro......fantastic!  Best intro I've ever seen probably.  It really has a movie feel ya know.  Anyway, I start up the mission and it seems to be all going smoothly.  I've cleared the village of the enemies and then decide to save the game.  But there's a problem.  When the game continues after the save it is absolutely slow like hell!  I've left it for a while and came back to it to see if it was just a temporary thing but nope.  I can barely move 'cause of the lag now.  I've tried the mission out more and more times as I really want to play this mission but still the same results.  My benchmark result is 6000 and I always play missions smoothly without any problems.  So is there anyway of overcoming this?  I'm really sorry if this question has been asked before but I can't be bothered to go through all those pages!  
Cheers, dantheman

[THobson]

dantheman:
I can only guess what the problem might be.  I have recently experienced somethign similar only in reverse.  I had heavy lag, and then the next day when I resumed it seemed okay.

Have you tried re-booting the computer?  Sometimes some background task, or the memory, or the swapfile or whatever needs to be refeshed.  Failing that it might be that the savefile is somehow corrupt or untidy, so doing a fresh save to create a new save file might help.  I can understand you not wanting to read the whole thread to find if this has happened before.  I can tell you that no one else has reported this.

Please let me know how you get on and if you get the problem resolved.

EDIT:

By the way - thank you for the compliments

[rado1265]

400 hours?  I have not kept track of the time - but that would be 8 hours a day 5 days a week for two weeks.

You're kiddin', right?  As I can see (read) you have a job, a familliy ... I anvy you, man, my wife will kill me for something like this.

I'm gonna to download the latest version (it's been a while when I play this baby - v1.0), not to test, just to play and to enjoy.

[THobson]

karantan:
This mission has taken all the spare time I had since about last September/October (plus some time that was not really that 'spare'), so 400 hours is a significant under estimate.  Back then it was more difficult for the family because I was trying to get the convoys and jeep patrols running properly so I would leave the mission runing continuously in de-bug mode where it contunally displays a lot of status information.   My wife would ring me at the office with status reports "east 1 jeep has run out of fuel" type of thing.  The later stages when I was fine tuning was even worse for them.  I would set it running on Sunday evening, go away for a business trip and get back Friday morning to see what state it was in - often it was crap, but eventually I got it so it was all still working after that time.  (I found myself wondering about the state of the engines in the jeeps - can you believe that?)  While I was away I would get e-mail reports from home: 'west convoy trips is 165; east convoy trips is .... etc. etc.'

But heh that's what families are for, supporting each other in times of need, and I had a lot of need.  Later the family really enjoyed doing the voices.

I do hope you enjoy it , there are a few issues but I think it is now coming together.

[rado1265]

Well, my wife wants me to spare most of my spare time with her, not with those whitish box.  Heh, she says so ...

When all this will be behind take your familly on some fancy dinner, they well deserve this.  I know you'll take them out without me being "wise".

I'll stop now, I already see Artak lurking behind the corner, you know, off topic things and all that ...

[LukieTee]

Hey Thob, been playing the mission and was up way to late playing it.

I was generally attacking small squads for ammo and weapons managed to get about 4-5 patrols in one area with a trap i killed a squad below some trees on a hill side. after about a minute or so of rearming i hear wolves. i run into the woods and 2 squads of 12 run past. as i was speculating attacking them my lady opens up with her Machine gun taking down an entire squad. then my men massacred the rest i just sat their dumbstruck .... wolves continue   "is that i bug" i thnk until 2 more squads come along and again my squad takes em i was like  ;D i didnt fire a single shot until low and behold a BMP comes along   this is where my LAW comes into play the BMP starts to unload when BOOM its taken down. i was thinking of just leaving my ppl their to pick the enemy off until ihear the sound of fighting in the distance and to my disbelief a helicopter comes crashing down ontop of the enemies corpses. This and the fact one of my men reported and Abrahms made me reconsider and run back to base. i marked the area on the map where i think i was (wasnt sure as i was in Veteran).

Dam this is such a great mission and is twice as good whith music in the background  ;D  ;D PZ keep it up and im looking forward to more of your work in the future